The NAR/NAA (National Association of Realtors) is offering a Real Estate on course November 6, 2008 designed with real estate auctions in mind. The move may be in response to the growing number of foreclosure auctions and agents who would like to know more about using the real estate auction process to his/her advantage.
The course is designed to help agents “understand and utilize the auction method of marketing and various levels of involvement. Identify properties and sellers that are good candidates for real estate auction. Establish an alliance with an auction company or establish an auction division within your company.”
You must RSVP in advance.
Here is the price breakdown for non-registered members:
$159 if you RSVP before October 10, 2008
$179 if you RSVP after October 10, 2008
If you are an NAR member, your costs are slightly reduced to $129 and $149, respectively.
You may contact Justin Morton by email or call 312-329-8495 for registration information. The location of this conference has yet to be announced.
Looking for a site with up-to-date foreclosure listings?
The Federal U.S. Government is taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two companies identified as having played large roles in exacerbating the current real estate market slump. CNN has the story:
“(CBS/AP) The historic takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which could come as soon as Sunday, moved to the forefront of the presidential campaign Saturday as candidates and congressional leaders seized on the enormous implications for taxpayers and the economy.
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together hold or back half of the nation’s mortgage debt, and have played an increasingly important role in the real estate market since the credit crisis started in August 2007. A government bailout could cost taxpayers around $25 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and two other regulators are working on a plan to put the troubled mortgage finance companies into a conservatorship, and remove Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron, according to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.”
This Canadian news report summarizes the U.S. real estate market. If you are considering investing in Canadian real estate independently of, or in addition to, U.S. real estate, you might find this video doubly interesting. The host and co-host also cover a some invaluable investment tips applicable to sellers, regardless of regional location.
Looking for a site with up-to-date foreclosure listings?
A real estate market report issued last week by a Northern Trust Economist reveals that home prices are still at a high, despite the recent economic decline and collapse of the real estate bubble. The analysis, based on the Case-Shiller Price Index and median household income data from the Census Bureau for 2008, shows that real estate prices have yet a ways to fall before real estate market prices bottom out.
“Excluding the go-go years when home prices climbed rapidly, the median price-to-rent ratio and mean price-to-rent ratio during 1987:Q1 – 2001:Q4 were 94.31 and 96.38, respectively. Compared with these numbers, the 125.4 price-to-rent ratio in the second quarter of 2008 is still at an elevated level. It appears that home prices have a long march ahead when compared with the mean (109.6) and median (102.5) price-to-rent ratio for the period 1987-2008:Q2 also.
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“The median price of an existing single-family home as a percentage of median disposable income rose to a record high of 469.5% in 2005, far above the median value of 337.9% during the history of this series (1968-2007) which includes the inflationary period of the later 1970s and the sharp increase in home prices seen in the first seven years of the current decade. Excluding the problematic period of the 1970s and the current decade, the median was 336.5%… Irrespective of which of these statistical measures one uses to evaluate the current status of the housing market, the median home price of an existing single-family home as a percentage of median household income was significantly higher than historical trends at the end of 2007… If history is any guide, both gauges — price-to-rent ratio and the median price as percentage of median household income — suggest that the bottom of home prices is not here yet.”
When the real estate bubble burst, people were quick to point the finger at subprime Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs). A foreclosure report released by Hope Now, however, shows that prime rate mortgages are now entering foreclosure in larger numbers than remaining sub-prime loans. Were we wrong?
“Here’s a milestone: There are now more foreclosures on prime mortgages than on subprime ones.
“The Hope Now alliance — the lenders’ group put together at the urging of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr — estimates the number of foreclosure proceedings that begin nationally in each month.
“The latest figures, for July, put the number at 197,000, the highest for any month since they started keeping track in July 2007.
“Of those, 105,000 were prime mortgages, and 92,000 subprime. The June numbers also showed more prime foreclosures initiated.
“The Hope Now people report that completed foreclosure sales are still higher for subprime but the gap is narrowing.
“There are far more prime mortgages than subprime, of course, and subprime loans are much more likely to get into trouble. But this does show how the foreclosure problem is spreading.
“One more indication that things are getting worse. Hope Now tracks the number of homeowners it says its members have helped each month to avoid foreclosures against the number of foreclosure sales completed.
“For most of 2007, it figured three homeowners were helped for every foreclosure. Now the ratio is about two-to-one.”
Looking for a site with up-to-date foreclosure listings?
According to a report issued August 25, Tolleson and Litchfield Park in Arizona were hit hardest by foreclosure crisis in the first half of 2008, when compared to the same period in 2007. Find Arizona Foreclosure Listings right now, or read on.
“Among Maricopa County cities, Tolleson led with the largest percentage increase in foreclosures and pre-foreclosures during the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2007.
“Foreclosures in Tolleson were more than 600 percent higher while more than 300 percent more foreclosure notices were handed out. There were 352 foreclosures in Tolleson from January through June, compared with 46 for the same time last year.
Billionaire Sam Zell made an interesting housing market prediction last week, saying that he expected home prices to bottom-out at the end of March 2009, but some economists believe otherwise. One such economist, Michelle Meyer with the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in New York, does not feel so confident that housing market prices will stop falling by the end of 2009’s first quarter. Instead, she predicts that it will not fully bottom-out until the end of 2009 itself. Why might some economists feel this way? Despite the fact that home buying across the U.S. has lately risen, the number of available properties on the market continues to climb.
Bloomberg.com’s Shobhana Chandra provides the full story:
“Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) — Sales of previously owned homes in the U.S. rose 3.1 percent in July, a gain that masked further housing weakness as inventories of unsold properties increased.
“Resales advanced more than forecast to an annual rate of 5 million, with at least one-third of the purchases coming from foreclosed properties, the National Association of Realtors said today in Washington. At the same time, the median price dropped 7.1 percent from July 2007, and the number of homes for sale jumped to a record.
“Sales averaged a pace of 4.95 million the past three months, the same rate as the previous period, indicating that purchases may have touched a bottom. At the same time, the glut of houses for sale means property values will probably keep dropping, putting pressure on household wealth and consumer spending.
“‘Existing home sales have likely stabilized,’ Michelle Meyer, an economist at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in New York, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. ‘In terms of demand, we’re probably close to the bottom. In terms of prices, we don’t think we’ll see a bottom until the end of next year.’”
An update on McMahon’s foreclosure situation. According to our post a couple weeks ago, “Trump to Rescue McMahon from Foreclosure,” Donald Trump had offered to purchase McMahon’s home and save him from foreclosure. Apparently Mr. McMahon did not accept Trump’s gracious offer to pay off McMahon’s debtors and act as landlord to the 85-year-old celebrity. Unfortunately, McMahon is unwilling to disclose who the buyer is and the identity of the buyer has not yet leaked to the Press.
Reuters Reports:
“LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Television celebrity Ed McMahon has finally found a buyer for his multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills mansion, avoiding a foreclosure that would have made him among the most high-profile victims of the U.S. housing slump.
“The buyer of the six-bedroom, five-bathroom home was not disclosed, but McMahon spokesman Howard Bragman said on Friday it was not billionaire Donald Trump. The New York developer had said last week he was in discussions to buy the house and lease it back to McMahon after widespread publicity about the celebrity’s default on his $4.8 million mortgage.
“‘It’s a confidential deal, and the buyer wants anonymity, but I can tell you it is not Mr. Trump — and it’s not John McCain,’ Bragman said, joking about the Republican presidential hopeful’s admission this week that he did not know how many houses he and his wife own.”
Seasoned foreclosure and real estate investor (and billionaire) Sam Zell predicts that the Single-Family real estate prices will have fallen as low as they can go by the end of Q1, 2009.
In addition to his prediction, Mr. Zell reminded Bloomberg television viewers in an interview on “Fannie, Freddie & Sub-Prime Crisis,” that even as foreclosures are on the rise and housing prices drop, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. What could possibly be so great about the current market slump, you might ask? Mr. Zell pointed out the correlation between housing price drops and housing affordability; as housing prices go down, the pool of people who can afford to buy real estate expands. That being said, Mr. Zell is not currently investing in real estate, claiming that he cannot impact that market enough to see a large return; he believes the current real estate market is “fairly priced.”
“Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Sam Zell said the housing market could start recovering as early as next year and he’s focusing on investing in debt rather than equity.
“‘We believe that the opportunities, particularly in difficult situations, are in the debt,’ said Zell, who made his fortune building the largest publicly traded office and apartment companies in the U.S. ‘We have been focused on, not only in real estate but in corporate, identifying debt situations where it is trading at a discount.”
“Early next year the U.S. may see the bottom of the single- family housing market, Zell, 66, said in an interview today with Bloomberg Television. ‘I think it will be relatively fragile as confidence builds and it will take probably another year for confidence to be completely returned.’
“Zell is focusing on debt as the real estate recession deepens. Existing U.S. home sales fell to a 10-year low in the second quarter and the median price for a single-family house dropped 7.6 percent. Record foreclosures have brought on more than $505 billion in capital losses and asset writedowns worldwide and companies that lent money to homeowners and repackaged the debt into securities saw those businesses falter.”
Donald Trump is in the negotiation process to help save 85-year-old Ed McMahon from foreclosure. His goal is to pay off the current lender and re-lease the property to McMahon. If Donald Trump invests in pre-foreclosures and foreclosure properties, there’s a good chance that there has to be reasonable profit potential there. The man is no fool. Sign up for RealtyStore and find yourself a pre-foreclosure right now!
Here’s the scoop on Trump’s rescue mission, published on August 15, 2008:
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Billionaire businessman Donald Trump is offering to rescue TV personality Ed McMahon from foreclosure on his multimillion dollar Beverly Hills home.
“There are discussions, but it is not a done deal yet. We are optimistic,” McMahon’s spokesman Howard Bragman told Reuters on Friday.
Trump, a real estate developer and celebrity host of TV reality show “The Apprentice,” told the Los Angeles Times he stepped in after widespread publicity over McMahon’s default on a $4.8 million mortgage on his six-bedroom, five-bathroom home.
